The other day I was sitting at dinner next to a friend I hadn’t seen in five years. She’s the wife of my husband’s friend. They live 1,500 miles away. We’re catching up, and she asks the most normal question in the world: “So, what have you been doing the last year?”
And in that moment, I realize — she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know I had cancer. She doesn’t know about the chemo, the surgery, the months of treatment. She’s just asking about my year the way anyone would. And I’m sitting there running a calculation in my head: Do I tell her? Do I bring down the mood at dinner? Will I be Negative Niki if I mention it? Or do I just say “Oh, you know, keeping busy” and let it go?
I told her. And she said what everyone says: “I had no idea. You look so great.”
That phrase. I’ve heard it so many times now. And it’s kind — it really is. But there’s something strange about hearing “you look great” when you don’t recognize the person looking back at you in the mirror. Because here’s the thing about cancer: it changes you in ways that other people can see and you can’t quite process. My hair grew back gray and black and curly. People who meet me now assume this is my look. That I’ve always had this hair. That this is just… me.
But it’s not. Or at least, it wasn’t. My self-image hasn’t caught up to the new me yet. I still reach for the ponytail holder some mornings before I remember — oh, right. That hair is gone. I even packed hair items for a trip before it hit me: I don’t need those anymore. This is what we’re working with now.
It reminds me of my wedding day. All that makeup, the hair done completely different from how I ever wore it. I looked in the mirror and kept thinking, “That’s not me.” I look at the pictures now and think I looked great, but the person in the mirror on that day felt like a stranger. The difference is, on my wedding day, I could wash it off. I went back to myself the next morning.
After cancer, you can’t wash it off. The mirror doesn’t reset. You wake up and the stranger is still there.
And it’s not just the hair. It’s the way you move through the world differently now. At my son’s soccer games, I used to sit in those hot 100-degree Kansas seats and sweat through the whole thing, cheering like a maniac. Now, I can’t make it the full game in that heat. I am still on medication. While I look 100%, I am not there. Not yet.
I think about my brother after Marine boot camp. When he came home, he was different and the same all in one. He had survived something disruptive — something that broke him down and rebuilt him — and you could see it. The way he carried himself. The way he talked. He was still my brother, but he was also someone new. And I remember not quite knowing which version I was talking to.
I have a much better understanding now of servicemen who saw action. You can’t help but be changed by what you went through. But how much do you share? When someone at a barbecue asks “How was it?” — do you tell them what it was really like? Or do you give them the easy version and move on?
There’s a scene in Cast Away where Tom Hanks’ character has finally been rescued after nearly starving on an island. He’s standing in front of a buffet — a completely normal, everyday buffet — and he just stares at it. To everyone else in the room, it’s just food. But he sees it through completely different eyes. The buffet hasn’t changed. He has. That’s how I feel looking into the mirror. The mirror hasn’t changed. I have. I am different but the same.
Moses had a version of this. After spending time with God on Mount Sinai, he came down to the Israelites, and his face was radiant — literally glowing. And here’s the part I love: he didn’t know it.
“When Moses came down from Mount Sinai… he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord.”
— Exodus 34:29
Everyone could see that something had changed about him. Aaron and the Israelites were actually afraid to come near him. But Moses himself had no idea. His experience on that mountain had transformed him in ways he couldn’t see yet.
Sound familiar? You go through something that changes you fundamentally, and everyone around you can see it — but you haven’t caught up. You’re still thinking of yourself as the person you were before, while the world is responding to the person you’ve become.
But here’s what Moses did next that really got me:
“When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face.”
— Exodus 34:33
He covered up the evidence of what he’d been through so it wouldn’t make other people uncomfortable. He only took the veil off when he went back to talk to God — when he was in the one place where he didn’t have to explain himself.
I was at a charity banquet once, seated next to a woman I’d never met. We were having a lovely conversation — the kind you have with a stranger when the table assignment works out. We go to exchange names and she gives me her first name. Then she pauses and says, “If I tell you my last name, it will get awkward. We’ve been in the news.” Such a strange thing to say. The next day, I do some research. She was a mother whose son and father were killed in a local religious hate crime. I thought I understood what she meant that night. I definitely understand now. When people realize who she is, they can’t process that enormous loss fast enough. And she has to sit there — watching them try. She has to live through the awkwardness and relive the pain with them, every single time. That pause before she told me her last name? That was her veil. She’d learned exactly what happens when it comes off.
I think about that veil every time someone asks me about my year and I hesitate. Every time I consider skipping the cancer part because I don’t want to be a downer. Every time I smile and say “I’m doing great” when what I really mean is “I’m doing great considering.” That’s the veil. We wear it to protect other people from our story. And sometimes we wear it so long we forget what’s underneath.
Paul wrote something in 2 Corinthians that hits differently after cancer:
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”
— 2 Corinthians 4:16
The outside and the inside are on two different timelines. Your body went through something. Your hair changed. Your energy changed. The face in the mirror changed. But the person you are — the real you, the one God sees — that person is being renewed. Not replaced. Renewed.
And then there’s this one:
“The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
— 1 Samuel 16:7
People at dinner see the curly hair and say “you look great.” But God doesn’t see the new hair or the old hair. He sees the woman who sat in a chemo chair and prayed through it with the support of so many friends and family. He sees the one who opened the door and let people in. He sees the one who got on a plane four weeks after surgery for her daughter’s cheer competition. The mirror may not recognize you yet, but God never lost track.
Here’s what I’m learning about the mirror: it only shows you the outside. It can’t show you the fight. It can’t show you the prayers at 2 AM. It can’t show you the months of being someone else’s brave face when inside you were terrified. The mirror is honest about what you look like, but it’s terrible at showing who you are.
2 Corinthians 3:18 says:
“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory.”
— 2 Corinthians 3:18
I love that phrase — “with unveiled faces.” No veil. No covering up the change. Let them see it. The transformation isn’t something to hide. It’s evidence that you went through the fire and came out different. Not damaged. Not lesser. Different.
The gray and black curls? They’re not a flaw. They’re a badge. They’re proof that my body fought and rebuilt. They’re new growth — literally. And maybe one day my self-image will catch up and I’ll look in the mirror and think, “Oh. There I am.” Not the old me. Not the wedding-day stranger. Just me. The version that survived.
Until then, I’m going to try to stop reaching for the ponytail holder. I’m going to try to answer “what have you been doing?” with the truth instead of the veil. And I’m going to trust that the God who knows my heart also knows my hair — every gray and black curl of it — and He’s not confused about who I am, even when I am.
“Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”
— 2 Corinthians 4:16
My Prayer
God, help me recognize the woman in the mirror. Not the one I used to be, but the one I’m becoming. When I reach for the veil — when I want to hide what I’ve been through to make everyone else comfortable — remind me that You see me unveiled. You always have. Help me catch up to the person You already see. And when I see someone else wearing a veil, let me be the person who makes it easier for them to take it off — to show the version of themselves that You already see. And until I do, remind me that new growth — even when it’s gray and curly — is still growth. Amen.
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